[sims] [SOLUS3] - Out of data SIMS clients not automatically upgrading (Rant)

[Rawns]

I'm fed up with SOLUS3 now. Capita insist that workstations should automatically upgrade if they are online in SOLUS3 and are out of data, but I'm calling b******t on this as it's blatantly not happening.

 

Got one school that has had SOLUS3 for the past few months and has the agent on all of their SIMS devices. I had a call from a colleague this morning who on site who can't get into SIMS to deliver training due to an "incompatible database" error. I find that this workstation is on 7.146. It was online in SOLUS3 and had not upgraded itself. I manually redeployed the workstation client and it upgraded with out any issues.

 

I decided to run an environment report against the SIMS Client devices and found 13 devices in SOLUS3, online, but running on various SIMS .net versions between 7.140 and 7.148. Done a re-deployment to all of these devices and they've all upgraded. Can someone please explain to me why these devices have been out of date for so long, and why SOLUS3 has not upgraded them automatically?

 

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

 

 

No, it's B.S Man!

[X-13]

No, it's B.S Man!

 

BS. That's Carl Pilkington.

[Rawns]

BS. That's Carl Pilkington.

 

Oh well done. Now everyone knows BS mans super secret identity...

[sparkeh]

Can someone please explain to me why these devices have been out of date for so long, and why SOLUS3 has not upgraded them automatically?

I'll take a punt on it being that Solus 3 is a horrible, misguided, broken piece of software that doesn't do what its supposed to?

[Rawns]

I'll take a punt on it being that Solus 3 is a horrible, misguided, broken piece of software that doesn't do what its supposed to?

 

You've used SOLUS3 before havn't you...

[JHLEHS]

The only thing I do when this happens to me is to browse to the machine and delete both the agent and sims then remove it and add it again. Not the best solution I know and Solus 3 is very flakey at times to put it nicely.

[resin1]

I'm with you. Countless times over the past couple of years I have said - let's go back to Solus 2 - I'm wasting way way too much time sorting out each update with S3.

 

But it has got steadily better.

 

The peice of the jigsaw which I am sure Phil Neal mentioned on here at some point, or maybe it was on SupportNet, is that they were going to finally add in functionality that basically allowed a client to fallback to the old S2 method of updating itself, if when the user ran SIMS, it checked and found that it was not the same version that the network had been updated to. Not sure when that is due, but it cannot come soon enough for my liking.

 

That would at least take away the burden on the likes of yourself having to sort out end users when, for whatever reason, the update didnt take with a client when you did the deployment. One intance of that I have seen a number of times is simply that a user had left themselves logged in and with SIMS running. If the S3 update cannot write over the solus.exe because its locked by a process, it updates all the other files but not that one. Then of course its out of date the next time a user re-starts and you get the incompatible database error, but S3 logs that the update was successful. Great eh?

[JHLEHS]

Yes sounds about right, when I recently upgraded SIMS across the school I only got a few incompatible database errors and that was mostly laptops that are never turnt on etc. When I get the incompatible database I just remove the agent and add it again. I always make sure I upgrade the workstation during the holidays and run a sql script to make sure that no one else is logged on at the time.

[enjay]

I've only run Solus 3 once so far, and the biggest problem I had was that it only seemed to want to update 5 clients at a time, meaning it took hours to deploy. Some agents did pick up the latest version on restart, but others didn't. Redeploy always successfully installed the update.

 

If you download the ISO from Capita, that includes the simsapplicationsetup.exe file which Solus 2 used, so you could deploy that via startup script instead.

[JHLEHS]

I just run a simple query on our SIMS SQL database and that's enough for me. That's a odd on that only 5 update at a time? Doesn it show any error at all or does it just not work? I've only used Solus 3 and I've had no issues.

[Rawns]

I've only run Solus 3 once so far, and the biggest problem I had was that it only seemed to want to update 5 clients at a time, meaning it took hours to deploy. Some agents did pick up the latest version on restart, but others didn't. Redeploy always successfully installed the update.

 

That's a odd on that only 5 update at a time? Doesn it show any error at all or does it just not work? I've only used Solus 3 and I've had no issues.

 

It sounds like the "auto download to agents" setting is not enabled in SOLUS3 meaning workstations won't get the required update packages sent to them until the actual deployment begins. 5 devices is the default value for deploying update packages to at one time so when the upgrade begins, it will push the upgrade components out to 5 devices at a time.

 

Enable "auto download to agents" so when you receive a new upgrade, SOLUS3 will actually push out the update files to each workstation before the upgrade is due to start. Then once the upgrade kicks off, all the workstations will already have the required upgrade packages and upgrade at the same time.

Edited March 14, 2013 by Rawns

[Ghostgame]

May SOLUS3.5 solve all our problems when it gets released.

[JHLEHS]

One can dream...

[Rawns]

One can dream...

 

Its just got to deliver, this release will be make or break I reckon. 2 years(?) now its been available for schools, and IMO, the uptake has not been very impressive at all. And it's been less than pain-free for the sites that have taken it.

[enjay]

It sounds like the "auto download to agents" setting is not enabled in SOLUS3 meaning workstations won't get the required update packages sent to them until the actual deployment begins. 5 devices is the default value for deploying update packages to at one time so when the upgrade begins, it will push the upgrade components out to 5 devices at a time.

 

"Auto download to agents" is enabled, but with a maximum concurrent downloads of 10 - should I increase that number?

 

This still doesn't explain why it didn't start downloading to the clients until after I'd done the database update though. Could it be that I hadn't left it long enough for them to all download it before I scheduled the deployment?

[Rawns]

"Auto download to agents" is enabled, but with a maximum concurrent downloads of 10 - should I increase that number?

 

This still doesn't explain why it didn't start downloading to the clients until after I'd done the database update though. Could it be that I hadn't left it long enough for them to all download it before I scheduled the deployment?

 

10 should be fine. I usually up it to 10 in bigger schools and leave it at 5 in smaller schools. How long did you wait between receiving the upgrade from your LA/Capita and actually deploying the upgrade? It depends on how many workstations you have in your environment, but I find that usually I authorise a release to a school in the morning (9/10am?) and the upgrade will start installing automatically from 7pm onwards. That gives plenty of time for all workstatiosn to get the required components before the upgrade begins (as long as the majority of workstations are online!)

[enjay]

How long did you wait between receiving the upgrade from your LA/Capita and actually deploying the upgrade?

 

I think I downloaded it from Capita towards the end of the afternoon and scheduled the deployment to run from 6am next morning. I've since found out that 6am is too late if I want PCs operational at 8:30am (unlike with Solus 2 of course).

 

To be honest, this is an area I'm a little unclear on, and will need to read up on before we do the Spring Update. I had some issues during the installation, so someone from Capita dialled in and he rattled through the installation, configuration and deployment schedule so quickly that I didn't really follow what he was doing, and he didn't seem willing to slow down or explain himself, even when I saw him setting options which contradicted the instructions I had downloaded. How should I schedule and deploy an update?!

[Rawns]

I think I downloaded it from Capita towards the end of the afternoon and scheduled the deployment to run from 6am next morning. I've since found out that 6am is too late if I want PCs operational at 8:30am (unlike with Solus 2 of course).

 

To be honest, this is an area I'm a little unclear on, and will need to read up on before we do the Spring Update. I had some issues during the installation, so someone from Capita dialled in and he rattled through the installation, configuration and deployment schedule so quickly that I didn't really follow what he was doing, and he didn't seem willing to slow down or explain himself, even when I saw him setting options which contradicted the instructions I had downloaded. How should I schedule and deploy an update?!

 

Could be then that users were winding down and shutting their machines off preventing them from getting the packages?

 

We have enabled "auto deployment" in schools, usually set to run from 19:00-10:00. The concept is me (at the LA) release an upgrade to the school. The SOLUS3 system will then download it and push out the update packages to any workstations online. In most cases, all workstations bar the server will be switched off after 5'ish. 7pm comes and SOLSU3 upgrades everything SIMS on the server. Users come in the next morning, power on their machines and "hopefully" will get SOLUS3 agent popups to say SIMS is going to be upgraded (as the auto deploy schedule is still in effect). I set it to run to 10am because despite what Capita say, most workstations don't automatically upgrade when then come online of their own accord, if the "auto deploy" schedule is still in effect, it seems to force the upgrade down. However, it is dependent on users not having SIMS .net open at the time of the upgrade.

[enjay]

So, what you're saying is that I should schedule the deployment for a few days into the future, giving the clients plenty of time to download the update - yes?

[Rawns]

So, what you're saying is that I should schedule the deployment for a few days into the future, giving the clients plenty of time to download the update - yes?

 

Effectively, yes. It could be a few days, could be a few hours, it really just depends on the size of your estate and the online availability of your devices. Once you receive the upgrade from Capita/LA in your SOLUS3 environment, the longer you hold off rolling it out, the more devices will get the update packages before hand. There will always be some devices that are offline though!

[enjay]

Thanks, I'll give that a try when I deploy Spring...